Concordia High School
Concordia, Kansas
Teacher: Timothy Berger
The
Electoral College
By Chad Sterling
12th grade
We have had the Electoral College system for years and it has worked well all of those years. There is no reason to change something that works great the way it is. We should not fix it if it is not broken. In Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution “Each state shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the state may be entitled in the Congress.”1 No Representative, Senator, or officer in the government can be an elector. The electors are directed by the Constitution to vote in their respective states, and Congress is approved to count their votes.
“Congressmen and state legislators from small states usually favor retention of the electoral college, reasoning that the college, which includes two votes for each state’s two senators, tends to increase the relative weight of the small states.”2 The states went three different ways in choosing the electors: the district system, where electors are chosen by the people; the legislative system, where state legislatures choose; and the winner-take-all system, where the winner takes all the electoral votes for that state. The legislative system has too much bargaining and payoffs. The district system lost popularity as it encourages third parties. So the winner-take-all system is the dominating system. Although there are still two states that use the district system all the other 48 states use the winner-take-all system. The individual states each decide as a state.
“The direct popular vote has been tried many times already in Latin America and Africa, and within three or four election cycles, the military has often had to take over the government in order to restore order out of the hatreds and anarchy that were created by such an electoral system.”3 The reason is not because of the people in those countries are insecure; it is the direct popular vote that is an insecure game. There are no limitations with the direct popular vote system. The direct vote allowed Hitler to take over Germany in 1933. The direct election is focused on types of Deception that are not possible within the Electoral College system.
We should absolutely not get rid of the Electoral College system. This system reduces any reason to run up the vote. “The winner-take-all feature of the Electoral College system discourages third party efforts. In contrast, a direct election system encourages candidates to run, simply because they can.”4 With the Electoral College only us U.S. citizens that are residents of a state may vote for presidential electors. It is the states that elect the president, not the citizens. The citizens vote for the states electors and then the elector votes for president. To win, the candidate has to have a majority in the Electoral College. It is a possibility that in a close race or multiparty race our Electoral College could not throw 270 votes for any candidate. In that case the House of Representatives would choose the president.
I know we need to do away with soft money because of the deceitfulness it has caused us. Soft money is unlimited union and corporate donations to political parties that allow special interest power brokers to have their way in Washington. If we can ban soft money Washington will hear our voices once again. It will have a limit on the amount of labor unions. Foreign governments will not be able to make unlimited contributions if we end soft money. It is our country so we should do what is best for us. Several industries, Oil and Gas companies, agri-businesses, and television broadcasters have already given millions and millions of dollars into soft money.4 Soft money has only been around since 1978, it didn’t really exploit until 1988. The problem of soft money is getting worse all of the time. From 1992 to 1996 the amount tripled and it could probably triple again. Congress must ban soft money before it overwhelms our campaign finance laws. To get rid of our soft money system it is going to require more than changing the labels put on money. We also do not need to have anyone put limits on it that would allow it to continue, we need to ban it completely once and for all. State parties should only be able to spend money permitted under the federal law on all federal election behavior. Everything will comply with the federal law. If we take the time to corrupt soft money it will be a huge step to restoring our public respect.
As I have pointed out and that you can see, the Electoral College is
the better way to go about electing our president. We
have used the Electoral College system for years and it has worked fine, whereas the
direct vote has had problems in other countries. “There’s
nothing illegitimate about a result that produces an electoral majority that’s
different from the popular majority,” says political scientist Michael Malbin of the
State University of New York—Albany.”5
It will be better for us and for our country to continue the Electoral
College System way.
Works Cited
1. “Electoral College.” The Columbia Encyclopedia. 6th Ed. 2000.
2. Munz, Peter. “Electoral College.” Encyclopedia Americana: 10th Ed. 1986.
3. The “Golden Goose” of American Politics. 9 Nov. 2000. <http://www.spectacle.org/297/currie2.html/
4. Electoral College. 8 Nov. 2000 <http://ftp.state.mt.us/sos/
5. Wildavsky, Ben. “School of hard knocks.” U.S. News. Nov. 2000: 52-54
Questions
1. How and when did the United States elect a president and vice president of different parties? Name them and their respective parties.
It occurred in the election of 1796, which was the election of John Adams who was a Federalist, as president, and Thomas Jefferson who was a Republican, as vice president. A Federalist elector voted for Thomas Jefferson.
2. Describe four ways that were suggested to elect the President between 1808 and 1846.
-Representative William Lawrence of New York introduced the proportional plan. It called for a division of each state’s Electoral College votes according to the popular vote received by each party. Under this plan the urban areas lose power and third parties are encouraged.
-Another
plan would eliminate the winner-take-all provision and its bias toward urban power and
against minority parties, but keep the Electoral College and its bias.
-During
1826 Charles Haynes, the Representative of Georgia introduced the automatic plan. All of states electoral votes would automatically
be cast for the candidate who received the highest popular vote. It keeps the winner-take-all provision of our
present system but abrogates the office of presidential elector. The states votes would
automatically be awarded to the ticket that carried that states popular vote.
-In 1808
the proposal to choose the President by lot first surfaced. It reoccurred unsuccessfully
in 1844 and 1846. Originally the candidates
to be chosen by lot were to come from retiring Senators.
3. Name five U.S. Presidents who were elected with less than a popular vote.
-1824 John Quincy Adams
-1844 J. Polk
-1848 Z. Taylor
-1856 J. Buchanan
-1860 A. Lincoln
4. Describe the winner-take all system. Which states use this system?
It is a
"multiple-selection" voting system. The
voters can vote for more than one candidate, only one candidate can win, the candidate
with the most votes, just as it is now. The
winner-take-all system is used in every state except for Maine. In 1969 Maine adopted a district plan where two
electors are chosen on a statewide popular level and one is chosen from each of
Maine’s two congressional districts.
5. When do electors vote and when are the results known?
The results of the popular vote have been set as the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. In January the votes are counted before both Houses and the results are officially announced.
6. What
affect would substituting a direct popular vote for the Electoral College have on third
party candidates? Why?
They thought the direct vote would encourage minority parties because there would be a greater probability that two major parties would not receive a majority. They maintained the Bayh Plan would make actual voting more important than population and would give less voice to the poor non-voters represented by the weighted urban vote.
7. Give
four arguments for and against a direct vote system.
-Advocates of direct elections claim such a system would always ensure that the candidate with the greatest popular vote would win the office of president, that it would give equal weight to every vote, it would do away with the faithless elector problem, would reduce the chance of fraud, would encourage greater participation and place the election more fully into the hands of the people where it belongs.
-A direct plurality system is used in the states to elect their governors who seem to have little trouble governing.
-William Sayre and Judith Parrish claim the direct vote would weaken the power of the states and strengthen the national government.
-Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri introduced the Federal System Plan. It provided for direct-vote election of the plurality winner as long as he carried more than one-half the states, a plurality in states with over one-half the voters, or a majority of the electoral votes.
8. Describe
the differences between the district plan, the proportional plan and the winner-take-all
plan.
Senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota and Representative Frederic Coudert of New York presented the district plan, whereby districts within the various states allocate electoral votes. Proponents of the plan wanted to see less preference given to urban areas and hoped to fragment the power of the largest states. The Proportional Plan introduced by Representative William Lawrence of New York called for a division of each state’s Electoral College votes according to the popular vote received by each party. Under the proportional plan, urban areas lose power, as they would with any plan other than the current winner-take-all system, and third parties are encouraged. The winner-take-all system is a "multiple-selection" voting system. This means the voters can vote for more than one candidate and that only one candidate can win and that is the candidate with the most votes, just as it is now.
9. State
the four points experts in 1969 agreed should be included in an ideal plan for electing
U.S. Presidents.
1. The need for a quick decision and clear-cut winner
2. The victor should be the peoples’ choice winner of the most popular votes
3. The president-elect should have a mandate to govern, a legitimacy which comes from a good margin of victory
4. The ideal system should not undermine the two-party system
10.Write
a paragraph describing what is meant by: Americans
prefer pragmatists to ideologues.
Americans prefer pragmatists because all facts appealed to by the pragmatist (assuming they are accurate) fall within the domain of historical knowledge. History is the study of past human actions, which means it is concerned with the unique individual event, not with a general pattern or theory. These are what the pragmatists call the “real world” of facts. Since the pragmatist has given his commitment to the real world, he should look into a study of the real world in history and learn what factors have contributed to freedom. The most serious error of pragmatism is its lack of appreciation for the role of ideology in social perception. How we think about social entities will greatly influence how we perceive them. Ideology is absolutely essential to the success of the libertarian movement, because it establishes a common frame of reference.